


anodynity

by deadlybride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Established Relationship, M/M, Season/Series 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: The pearl gave Dean his heart's desire. He realizes, very quickly, that his heart's desire isn't something he wanted.





	anodynity

**Author's Note:**

> This includes 'the full house of wincest,' but isn't really filling a space on my personal bingo card for it, and so I'm not including it in that series. This is just an attempt to think through episode 300, with a FHoW lens.

A warm heavy hand on his shoulder, a spiking panic in his gut he doesn’t know how to handle. Worlds colliding. It wasn’t what he asked for but it’s what he’s getting, and Dad’s—here. Dad’s here.

Dean sits on one side of his kitchen table and Sam sits at his shoulder, and across from them Dad sits with his short hair and his beard with grey in it and a glass of Dean’s own cheap whiskey in his hand, and a look in his eyes like—and that panic isn’t letting up. Dean’s got a superfine shudder under his skin like a vamp’s looming out of the dark, but at the same time, it’s _Dad_. A dozen years, more, and when he looks Dean right in the eyes it feels the same. Almost the same. How can it be? Sam’s knee presses brief against his under the table and Dean sits up straight and tries to focus. There’s a hammering in his ears, inside his head, his unwanted passenger screaming. Take a number, Dean thinks, and pushes everything else down. Dad’s here.

These wishes. There ought to be a goddamn manual, an owner’s guide. Every time, it’s some unexpected bullshit. Some random result other than the one you thought you’d get. Misery, more often than not. He’s trying to set the knowing of that aside, cram it down in a lockbox even tighter than the one he’s got Michael trapped in. Dad’s here, and that’s more than Dean could’ve ever hoped for.

Only—“You saved the world,” Dad says, a little creeping edge of something in his voice. It’s something Dean doesn’t recognize. Sam twitches, next to him.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and Dad meets his eyes and Dean can hardly stand to hold them.

Dad doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t push. He looks at the two of them and drinks their whiskey and everything in him is quiet, watchful. Sitting and accepting, when Dean’s never known him not to stand up. To demand. A life gone by and Dad says, _okay._ Okay. Dean possessed and Sam possessed and both of them dead a couple dozen times between them, and a nephilim in their house and an angel at their shoulder, and Dad says, _okay_. Dean bites his tongue between his teeth and there are so many more things he could tell. Thoughts he’s had, dreams he’s had. Sam’s knee presses against his, harder. Dean breathes, and Dad looks at him, and it’s fine. It has to be fine.

Of all the times for it: Mom shows up. Dad’s face collapses into something Dean never saw in it before, not once, and he touches her jaw and she curves up into him and Dean stares, the shudder under his skin going still. Like, oh. Like, this is how it was meant to be. Before things got so fucked up. Before everything, before destiny and all its shitty chickens came home to roost. Dad, and Mom, and the two of them pressed together so tight that they’re trying to be some other thing, some truth between them that’s beyond what he can touch. Mom’s smile, blinding through her tears, and Dad’s rough-warm fingers tucking her hair behind her ear. That touch, calluses and all. Dean knows that, and knows now finally what it means. What it meant. Back then.

He has to escape to his room. Jacket, keys, wallet. Excuses. He stands at his sink and for a minute he thinks he’s going to throw up, and after swallowing and breathing and wetting his mouth he knows he won't, and he shakes away the thunder in his ears and washes his face instead, holding cold damp over his closed eyes. Dad, here, and if everything’s _fine_ then what does that mean? Dean doesn’t know how to quantify fine, anymore.

Wishes. Dad’s wrapped up in Mom, and Sam’s somewhere. A houseful of Winchesters and the world not ending. He doesn’t know what to do with it. Dad, here, present tense, and it wasn’t what he’d wished for. He’d thought in clear words, imagined it: Michael gone, stuffed in a cage or dead or catapulted to goddamn Neptune, he didn’t care, just—out, and not able to hurt anyone anymore. He’d wished it and what he got was his dad, holding a shotgun on him and then helping him to his feet, that rough grip right out of every memory Dean has, and Sam’s shock, and Dad—smiling at him. It should’ve been simple, it was meant to be. He should’ve known better. Nothing ever is.

Dad’s standing in the library. Mom’s in the kitchen. Sam’s somewhere. Dean leans on the step, watching Dad look at the books Sam’s spent so much time cataloguing, and he wants Sam intensely for a second and then, horribly, selfishly, doesn’t. Wants both of them gone. Wants to be on a wooded roadside with the moon hanging heavy in a starless sky. Maybe a motel room, miles from anything, and a black early morning stretching out ahead with blood and burning behind him, and a day ahead without any danger. A little privacy. A little world, carved out of nothing.

“You just gonna hang out over there?” Dad says, and the breath goes out of Dean. Dad always did seem to know where he was. He takes the two steps, up into the library, and in the golden lamplight Dad really doesn’t seem real. He tips a sideways look at Dean, and the corner of his mouth turns up, and his head ducks in a soft laugh, and he’s suddenly so real it’s like Dean’s plummeted downward through time. Crashing through the surface of a dark lake, a mirror back to a past he tries not to think about—back to being barely more than a kid. 2003, Sam gone to college for two years. It was just him and Dad, and they were everything they had.

“I forgot that haircut,” Dean says, and Dad grins, at the ground. “What was it, the—principal’s ghost?”

“You were a little quick with the accelerant,” Dad says, and yeah, Dean remembers now. Stupid mistake, and that sharp stink was worse almost than grave-smells, and Dad had buzzed his head in the motel sink that night rather than go around patchy. Dad’s smile goes soft, and he lifts his head and looks at Dean. “A month ago, for me.”

Dean licks his lips. Dad’s looking at him like—he got that, sometimes, in the very earliest hours of dawn, when the grey was peeking into the world. A thumb coming soft over the top of his ear, dragging down behind it. Like, if it didn’t happen when either of them could see, could speak, it didn’t happen at all. Like if it happened then, it was safe. “Not a bad look,” Dean says, and his voice shouldn’t get that thick, shouldn’t waver.

Pounding in his ears, his chest. He closes his eyes. A warm hand closes over his shoulder, and Dad’s—right there, and he’s real, and Dean could just go down to his knees. Never get up again. “Hey, kiddo,” he says, and it’s… soft, _so_ soft, and Dean doesn’t know what to do with this.

His dad’s not soft. His dad isn’t easy. Dean loves him, loved him, with every particle and fiber he had left that wasn’t wrapped up in loving Sam, and he’s got heat building up behind his eyes, a thickness in his throat. That quiver, where his breastbone ought to be. He doesn’t know what to do with this Dad—this man, who leans in and hugs him and makes Dean shudder all over, nape to stomach to thighs, and his hands clench in the soft sides of Dad’s shirt but he doesn’t dare hug back.

They’re the same height, or close enough. He forgets that. Forgot that. Dad’s arms around his shoulders, his hand on the back of Dean’s head. The scrape-soft of his beard, shocky memory jolting forward. How Dean had loved it, when he first grew it out. The stubble hurt, and then the beard was soft, and he’d touched it sometimes when Dad was drowsy, those midnights when he’d felt brave enough.

Most often, Dad would jerk his head away, would frown. Would roll away, sit up, his shoulders bare and brutally squared-off in whatever silvery-edged night they found themselves in. Sick inside, regretting, and Dean would wish with everything he had that he could’ve just left well enough alone. Could’ve held inside himself and not asked. Asking for more always seemed to do more harm than good.

Dad sighs, pulls back. Holds Dean’s shoulders in both hands. Dean forces his eyes open and Dad’s looking at him like—not like he looked at Mom, not like that. Not a shock of something he’d never hoped for. Dean feels known, accounted for. He reaches up, his gut a twist, and runs his fingers along Dad’s jaw. Featherlight, brushing the line of the beard, as though half-measures wouldn’t be worth the same amount of pain, and he holds Dad’s eyes and watches and sees the second that there isn’t a fraction of change. Dad looks at him, that small smile tacked on, his eyes soft, and Dean’s fingers curl back into his palm, cringing away.

“You’re a good son,” Dad says, voice a velvet pillow soft enough to smother him, and Dean could just shoot himself for the way it makes his heart ache, at the same time that it makes him want to hurl. He knew he was fucked up, that wasn’t news on any level, but this is a whole new ballgame.

Dad talks to Sam, and Sam comes away with red wet eyes but with a lightness to him, too. Dad holds Mom, and she practically vibrates with happiness. Dean washes the dishes and thinks of the time Dad had come home drunk and he’d been waiting up, and how he’d been bitter and tired and angry and Dean had said, bitter enough for the both of them, _guess that’s that_ , and he’d thought for a second that Dad would slap him except that Dad only stood over him, and had slid a rough hand under his chin, and everything in Dean had gone tight and hopeful and yearned up like a friggin’ puppy, begging. In the morning he’d been sore and uncertain and Dad hadn’t looked at him for three hundred miles, and he understood then that he was something for Dad, and Dad was something for him, and they loved each other and they could give each other something no one else could but those two things didn’t go together, and neither were they enough. Never enough, and it hurt him for a long time. No matter how fucked up it was, it hurt. For years. He didn’t know, then, what he knew now. How the heart reshaped itself, and how hard it was to fit anything else inside, once it did.

This man who is not his father talks to him, and smiles, and looks at him like only one other person ever has. They eat dinner, as a family. Dean doesn’t think Mom can see it, her eyes full of the living breathing fact of him. So easy, this man at their table. So approachable, so kind. Says all the right things. Says he’s proud, and with the years between them Dean can believe that it’s true, and it makes his eyes well up all the same. This man who is not his father holds his eyes and cups his cheek and Dean thinks, his real dad, the one whose hand hurt impersonally, the one who looked away more than he focused on what was right in front of him—he was proud of Dean, too. In his way. Proud of both of them. He loved them, and it was hard and imperfect and not enough, not nearly enough most of the time, but it was honest. A rough-edged, painful, honest thing, not a wistful weeping dream that lied to make him happy.

Mom cries afterward like her heart is broken. Sam dashes his knuckles under his eyes, gulping, and Dean’s face is wet but he feels like he can breathe, for the first time all day. His head hurts, and inside him there’s a hammering, but the tremble of wrongness is gone. Dad’s gone, and the world’s right again.

*

Doesn't take long for the bunker to empty out again. Mom bails, because that's what she does, and for once in his life Dean's grateful for it and understands, completely. Cas goes back to check on Jack. Dean should pay closer attention to where they are, what they were doing, but his mind's somewhere else. Some other time.

He sits at the table, in his kitchen, and holds a glass of whiskey between two hands. Same one he'd given Dad, and he runs his thumb around the rim, cool crystal dragging at his thumb. With the pearl crushed, the wish undone, it's like Dad was never here—there'd be no lingering touch of his mouth on the glass, no impression in the armchair where he'd sat for a moment, smiling that unfamiliar smile at Dean. Should've been flushed out of his memory, too, and Sam's, but it turns out they're not that lucky. They never are.

Midnight, somehow, and Dean's been sitting there long enough that his ass is hurting, when Sam fills the doorway, standing on the top step. He looks at Dean, and Dean takes a sip of the whiskey he's just been staring at and doesn't meet his eyes. "Hey, honey," he says, instead. "How was your day?"

Sam doesn't laugh. Fair enough—it wasn't funny.

He's been waiting. Hasn't dared to go to bed, hasn't really stirred from this spot, for hours, since the door slammed closed behind Mom's back. After that first rush of overemotional tears he hasn't cried, when he'd kind of expected to. Maybe it would've made Sam hesitate, on whatever he's about to say. Whatever it is, Dean deserves it.

There's nothing, though, for a minute. Sam stands there, and then takes the two steps slow, and settles down in the spot where Dad had sat, and slips his fingers across the smooth wood to take the glass right out of Dean's hand. Dean lets him have it, because really—if anyone deserves a drink as much as Dean does right now, it's Sammy.

"I burned the pearl dust," Sam says. Neutral. He twists the glass around and around between his fingers, slow smooth scrape of the crystal against the wood.

Dean nods. If he doesn't unclench his teeth he's going to end up with a hole in his cheek. He takes a deep breath, in and out. A throb starts behind his eyes and he closes them, and consciously works his jaw open, and says, trying to joke, "Hey, at least you won't turn into Sam Jobs or whatever. That turtleneck was not your look."

Silence, heavy. Another juddery rotation of the glass. Dean opens his eyes and stares at his hands clenched together on the table, and says, "God, Sam. Either drink it or give it back, and say something."

A pause, and then Sam does finally pick up the glass and drains the whiskey down, like taking a shot. Dean can't help but watch and that means he's looking at Sam's face when he grimaces at the sting, and when his eyelids dip. "I don't know what to say." Sam's mouth presses flat, twists as he shrugs. "I want to—god. I want to say, are you okay, but that's ridiculous. I want to ask what the hell, except that I kind of know. Don't I."

That old stupid reaction raises up in Dean's chest, fast as instinct. To deny, to deflect. Been too long since he could lie about it, though, because Sam knows.

"I thought," Sam starts, while Dean's still, stupidly, silent. "I thought the pearl would take care of things. Make Michael go away. But I guess it can give you something you want more than that."

"I didn't want that." Sam does look up at him, finally, disbelief and a little shrug, like, _please_. Dean licks his lips and his second stupid instinct after denial is to deflect, to joke, to shove at Sam and be an asshole, and he opens his mouth to say—he doesn't even know, some awful shitty thing, but he shuts it again fast enough that his teeth clack. He's too old for this and Sam doesn't deserve it. Not after today. Sam frowns a little and Dean sighs, and stands up, and while Sam's still blinking at him he comes around and sits right next to him on the other side of the table. Sam starts to turn and Dean shakes his head, presses his shoulder against Sam's, knee and hip, and he runs his hands over his head before he slides one over Sam's and laces their fingers together. All against him Sam goes stiff with surprise, but he lets Dean hold his hand, like the goddamn ridiculous teenage girl he's being right now. "Sammy. I didn't want that. Not—I didn't wish for that."

He's just staring forward, and maybe Sam's looking at his profile but at least they're not looking each other in the eye. Years gone by between them and they've made a pact, something that's endured longer than demon deals, than blood promises, than exchanges of rings. Dean can look Sam in the eyes and tell him that he loves him—that's easy, at last. Other truths are harder. So many shitty things they've had to say to each other, so much awful that's gone down. Better not to see the way Sam's face might change. Dean looks at the coffee pot, instead, at their neat tray of mugs he washed and Sam dried, at the sugar bowl, at the bottle of bourbon stashed by the non-dairy creamer, and it's safer there, easier, to say, "I was thinking about him."

Sam's hand squeezes his, lightly. "What about?"

Neutral, again. Judgment-free, like Sam's so good at being. Dean doesn't know where he gets it from—neither he nor Mom nor Dad have ever been able to do it. "Not what you're thinking, probably," Dean says, and Sam's shoulder pushes against his, a little jostle. He clears his throat. "When—I was trying to wish. I thought it, I wanted Michael out, and I was thinking about that time, way back. When we went back in time, and we met Mom and Dad when they were practically kids. Michael possessed Dad, talked to me."

Deep breath, deep sigh after. "I remember," Sam says.

Feels like it was a lifetime ago. It was, really. Dad was so—young. Young, and happy, his wife at his side. Even when they and the angels came in all wrecking-ball, destroying everything he thought he knew, he stood up tall and wanted to do the right thing. Young, but even so he'd grown up hard and been to a war and come back with hope in him, and there was a person who'd crawled their way inside. Who he'd do anything for. He said yes, to Michael, when it meant saving his family. When it meant saving the person he loved most in the world.

That person died anyway, though, and the John Winchester they'd met that day wasn't the one who'd raised them. Who'd held Dean's cheek in a rough hand, despair in his face, and Dean had closed his eyes not to see it and leaned in, and tried to make it better. He thinks he should've known, even then, that he couldn't. In retrospect, the years of bitterness and misery and outright hate behind him, it's obvious. If someone took Sam from him—when someone _had_ taken Sam from him—it didn't get better. There was no making it better.

"I think the pearl was trying," Dean says, after too long a silence. His voice creaks, and even if he's arranged them so Sam can't see his face he closes his eyes. He tries to tug his hand away but Sam folds his other hand over the top, doesn't let him. He subsides, and swallows, and tries again. "I think it was trying to make—I don't know. Something happen. Our family, all together again. Dad, happy. If we were all together, maybe, that could've been my—god, it sounds so stupid. My heart's desire. Like this is a Disney movie? Come on."

"Yeah, the Little Mermaid, that's you," Sam says. Dean snorts, and Sam does take one of his hands away, then, and there's the sound of pouring liquid. Whiskey into glass, Dean's favorite cocktail. "It was a nice dream. I can see why the pearl tried to give it to you."

Non-judgmental, again, and Dean folds over and puts his forehead on the cool wood. "It wasn't nice, Sam," he says, and Sam's arm slides off his back, his hand going light on Dean's where they're still touching. "He was so—shit. He and Mom were so happy."

"Yeah," Sam says, a question tucked inside it. "Never seen her that way. Or him, for that matter."

"Me either," Dean says, and has to drag himself free, finally, lifts up and drags both hands over his face, and in a rush, because he can't not, because he can't keep this secret when they've promised to tell each other the truth, always, he says, "He never looked at me like that, either."

All this winding around, to say what's been curled up like poison in his gut. Sam doesn't say anything. Dean keeps his face half hidden, his bones feeling exposed under the too-thin layer of his skin. Sam knows, Sam has known. Alastair's big mouth, smiling threats and telling the truth because the truth always hurt worse than lying, and Sam killed him for it. Didn't make it any less true, and didn't make it hurt less when, in that horrible horrible year, Sam pitied Dean for it. It wasn't worth pity. Dean didn't want that, or need it. No one understood. How could they. How it hurt, and how it made sense, on those nights alone when shadows stacked up on the horizon like towering thunderclouds, when the only safety was felt in dark rooms with salt at every doorway and in every window, all the lamps off and moonlight painting bleak angles on things that should have felt familiar. Hardness, and the misery of knowing that nothing would make it better—but that there was a palliative, at least. A little taste of something that wasn't pain, even if it was never going to be enough. That was what they had, and Sam didn't understand that. Not until later.

"What happened," Sam says, soft, not like he's really asking. How could he want that answer?

It's a relief that Dean can say, "Nothing." He swallows, drops his hands to the table. Sam isn't touching him at any point, now. "He was just— _nice_." His eyes are open, unseeing and unfocused on the stupid little coffee table, the open empty doorway, the shadows of the hall. The understanding unfolds in him like a memory rising, something he should've known. "Oh. He—looked at me like you do."

Sharp inhale, between Sam's teeth. He doesn't say anything but he stands up, and paces away, braces on the island. His head sinks between his popped-up shoulders and Dean stares at him and can't fathom how he didn't put two and two together. Math never was his strong suit.

Dad's face, open, looking at Dean like—yeah. Like a known quantity, a familiar thing. The Impala's bench seat, holding him just right, or a favorite pair of jeans, or the perfect worn grips on his Colt, letting his fingers slip into just the right place. Coming home.

Heat in his ears, his cheeks. Girly as shit, but Dean remembers the first time Sam looked at him that way. All jumbled up, in that terrible crazy day, but—when they'd stuffed his soul back inside him, and Cas had given that terrible diagnosis, and Dean had thought Sam would never wake up, and he'd been sitting there trying distract himself with Bobby's bitchy attitude and a dead-end case and his stomach had been a sour awful knot and his heart had been in his throat and then he heard, soft and almost desperate, _Dean_. Half a breath, hope caught in it. He'd turned and Sam was standing there, huge, everything in his face, and Sam hadn't needed to hug him for Dean to catch the brunt of feeling that slammed into his chest. No fucking around, no lie hidden somewhere, no holding back. Sam pulled back and looked into his eyes and that—that was it. Tilt, game over.

Dad—his real dad, not the soft copy that disappeared from the world—Dean never got that. "Wow," he says, a little breathless. "That pearl, whoever made it was—really, really dumb."

Sam turns his head, looks at him. Dean huffs, a weight lifted away, but he doesn't really know how to explain it. When he gets up Sam turns around, and he doesn't move when Dean comes and presses against him, thigh to thigh and hip to hip and his hands braced on the counter either side of Sam's waist. Sam looks down into his face, a tightness there. Not judging, sure, but not okay with it—and Dean wouldn’t want him to be. "Sammy," Dean says, and shakes his head, fumbling for the words. "The spell, the wish, it—it tried to give me something, a heart's desire, but—hearts are _dumb_. Hearts want all kinds of stupid crap. Dad here, sure, that's perfect, but—that wasn't _him_. You got that, right?" Sam frowns, and Dean huffs, frustrated. "Understanding, not pushing back for a second against all the crazy crap we were feeding him? Saying everything you'd want to hear? C'mon, does that sound like Dad?"

The corner of Sam's mouth turns up. "Okay, yeah, not really."

"Not really," Dean says, eyebrows high, and gets Sam to roll his eyes, a little. "Yeah. And maybe, you know. I wanted that. I wanted him happy, and easy for once, and I—I wanted, sometimes." He licks his lips, can't finish it, and Sam's eyes change. A flicker, and Sam's fingers curl into the open split of Dean's flannel, comforting weight. "It doesn't matter," Dean says, and there's a little tilt to Sam's eyebrows, skeptical even if he doesn't say anything. "Doesn't. 'Cause, even if maybe my dumbass heart wanted something like that, my heart's not the one making the decisions around here. My dumbass brain is. And what did we say?"

Sam's cheek sucks in on one side. His hand lays flat on Dean's chest. "I'm good with who you are," he says. A soft echo, and carrying with it everything that saying that means.

Dean shrugs. "Yeah," he says, and it's not a surprise, really, when Sam dips down and kisses him, slow and soft. Their lips parting, at last, just so they can breathe in against each other. Dean gets out the rest of it there, less than an inch between them. "Perfect wishes never work. What matters is what we choose to do. That's what's real. Not a magic trick."

Another inch back and Sam looks at him, full in the eyes. Maybe nothing's fixed. There's still an angel tangled up with Dean's soul, and their mom's out there somewhere with a re-broken heart, and there's a miserable road to walk down, still in front of them. Hard and awful, no doubt, and they're back to square one. Well, what else is new.

Dean pushes Sam's hair back off his forehead, tucks it behind his ear. Sam's knuckles drag against his jaw, and his eyes are steady on Dean's, and Dean takes a breath, takes it in. That's it. That's the real deal, not the facsimile he got from that smiling shell. There it is, somehow and always like the first time. That cheap-ass magic didn't get it close to right. There's never going to be any version Dean would choose, but this.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/185400922734/okay-so-full-house-of-wincest-john-comes-back)


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